Latin American Electroacoustic Music Collection

Jorge Antunes, Canto Selvagem, 1967
(Brazil)



Recording time: 2 min 53 s.
Instruments: Tape
Recorded at: Studio of Chromo-Musical Research, Villa-Lobos Institute. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Other resources available:
- Biography of Jorge Antunes
- Compositions by Jorge Antunes

About this composition:

This work dates from 1967 and was produced in the Antunes Studio of Chromo-Musical Research, then in the Villa Lobos Institute, to where Antunes had transferred his laborotory.
At the end of 1966 the composer Reginaldo Carvalho was named Director of the Canto Orfeõnico National Conservatory (CNCO). The Ministry of Education and Culture of the military dictatorship of the Castelo Branco government, in transition to the Costa and Silva government, had provided some space so that Reginaldo Carvalho might transform the old Conservatory in the Villa Lobos Institute. The CNCO, which been created for Villa Lobos in 1942 in the Getúlio Vargas government, changed however; in 1967, it was transformed into the Villa Lobos Institute, with a new structure, new curricula and new pedagogical orientations.
Reginaldo met Antunes in July, 1966, in Aldeia do Arcozelo, where Paschoal Carlos Magno promoted the Festival of Contemporary Music. In this Festival, Jorge Antunes was presenting his Song of Peace, for baritone, piano and magnetic tape of electronic sounds. In 1967 Carvalho invited Antunes to join the teaching staff of the Villa Lobos Institute and to direct its Centre of Musical Research. The Institute could not count on suitable equipment, and so Antunes took all his material to the Villa Lobos Insititute, also resolving his personal problem of lacking a workspace. In the small room that was offered him, a shelter in the old UNE Building (Flamengo Beach, 132), Antunes found an old Revox recorder which helped enrich the studio. There was also an old, totally defunct Hammond organ, which although useless, did embellish the environment.
Thus, Antunes began to administer the first course in Brazil, aimed at the study of new music: A Course in Concrete, Electronic and Magnetophonic Music. The novelty attracted scores of young composers, poets, dramatists and cinematographers.
The work Savage Song was the first electroacoustic piece produced in the Villa Lobos Institute. Once again, improvisation with sine and saw-tooth wave generators was predominant in the musical construction. Recordings of percussive blows were prepared through the use of excessive increases in the speed of the recorder. The noises of percussion were intended to awaken feelings of primitivism, characterisitic of aboriginal or savage cultures. In order to produce noises with periodic and savage rhythm, Antunes used various small objects: cardboard boxes, small drums, plastic containers, etcetera.
Formally, the work did not stray from traditional standards of symmetry, allowing it to be analysed in three sections. In the first section the percussive and periodic noises enter into a dialogue with electronic improvisations, whose sounds demand the remembering of savage shrieks. In the second section the percussive noises are transformed with echoing repetitions, using the resources of the old Revox recorder. Point sounds which are interlaced with rhythmic effects were produced with a toy (the Harmonete) and a generator. The very short third section is a coda, reminiscent of the first section.

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